Add subscription termination info to Email Aliasing

Site Development
1

Hi there,

fyi i noticed an important difference between SimpleLogin and Addy which i think would be good to emphasize in the guide;

Addy.io:

What happens if I have a subscription but then cancel it?
[…]
Any custom domains will be deactivated
Any additional usernames will be deactivated
If you have any more than 1 recipient they will be deleted
Paid account settings will be reverted to default values
Any aliases using paid plan only domains will be deactivated
If you have any more than 10 aliases using a shared domain e.g. anonaddy.me they will be deactivated
If your account username has catch-all disabled then it will be enabled

Source

SimpleLogin:

When your subscription ends, all aliases you created continue working normally, both on receiving and sending emails. Concretely:

  • All aliases/domains/directories/mailboxes you have created are kept and continue working normally.
  • You cannot create new aliases if you exceed the free plan limit, i.e. have more than 10 aliases.
  • As features like catch-all or directory allow you to create aliases on-the-fly, those aliases cannot be automatically created if you have more than 10 aliases.
  • You cannot add new domain, directory or mailbox.

For example, if you have 100 aliases by the time your subscription ends, these 100 aliases will continue receiving and sending emails normally. You cannot however create new aliases.

source

So that’s quite a major difference, since you will loose access to all your e-mail addresses (and possibly connected accounts) when canceling your subscription with addy.io.

On the other hand, SimpleLogin will keep working fine and still forward all your e-mails.

Hope that helps.

5 Likes
2

Personally, I’d rather hide this information.
Allowing the end user to keep its alias is quite nice, but it is unsustainable from a business perspective.

There are various example of unsustainable business services thst we see, and they will always end up in

  • shutting down
  • reducing or stopping the unsustainable service
  • increasing the price of suce service (after collecting many users)

Here are some examples

  • business that offer one time payment cloud storage. Also unlimited storage
  • … One time payment for virtual machines / compute
  • very low price on purchase of domain or web hosting, only to increase 5x on next year

Because the service is unsustainable, you can’t make any assumption that they will still run in 1 years or more.

Is is very king of simple login to offer this. But for the well being of the company and the service, I would ask you to not abuse this kindness. If everybody cancel their plan and keep usi g tje service and it become u profitabke to offer such service, then the quality of the service could fall, future jmprovement could be slowed down or cancelled, or the service chsnged to stop being kind and start maximizzing profits.

3

Is there any proof that pointing to a feature actually increase the likelihood of abuse ?

1 Like
4

Yea, i agree, i seriously doubt that.

They have a healthy business model. I actually think the opposite is true: SimpleLogin is a bit more expensive than Addy, but this feature is also what makes them more attractive… in the end they get more customers.

If this would no longer be the case (unlikely), they would remove the feature for future customers.

5

It doesn’t actually cost anything extra to continue serving the aliases. A deleted alias still needs to be kept track of, because if it’s given to another user down the line they might receive email not intended for them.

1 Like
6

IIRC this is only true if you use SimpleLogin through SimpleLogin and not through Proton. This can be kind of confusing.

1 Like
7

To be more clear for others reading this, I think you mean aliases that were generated via the SimpleLogin website as opposed to Proton Pass (hide-my-email aliases or whatever it’s called) are kept continually.

For those who use connect their Proton accounts to SimpleLogin, your aliases continue working as long as you manually create your aliases through the SimpleLogin website.

If created as a hide-my-email alias on Proton’s websites or UIs like Proton Pass, I think you need to continue paying for Proton in order to keep those aliases.

1 Like
8

One other factor worth noting. I believe that PGP encryption (between SL and PM or your email provider) will no longer work if you stop paying for SL premium. So it isn’t exactly correct to say:

all aliases you created continue working normally

2 Likes
9

After proton released proton pass, i saw promotions:

  • 50% for a year (or something similar)
  • 1 dollar monthly fee, lifetime, until you cancel yout premium
  • Newsletter link (not something personal), what gives you 1 year for free (just attach a card)…

What i mean by that: there is a promotional/marketing value in the service itself, and that is calculated into the marketing and overall budget i guess… (reflecting to the unsustainablility)

10

This alone instantly meaningless, basicly: “i know better what you thought, than you do…”
also TL;DR
Your statements are incorrect:

  • PP is an SL frontend, no difference in “aliases kept” policy (i mean inner workings, not actual ToS/policy, but that is easily cicrumventable)
  • All aliases are in SL, regardless of creation “website”
  • Proton (account), Proton Mail, Proton(mail)-alias, ProtonPass, ProtonPass-alias, SimpleLogin, and SimpleLogin-alias, should not used as freely interchangable names, those are too different in some cases (read the whole pos for clarity)
  • In the world of apps, browser addons, mobile appls, mentioning “websites” confusing/restictive/ makes false impression, when you want to be “more clear for others reading this”. Sure some things not avaible everywhere (e.g. totp setup in browser addons), but “as long as you manually create your aliases through the SimpleLogin website” just makes the usage not right.

_
Main meat

Proton existed (P), ProtonMail existed (PM), SimpLogin existed (SL), SL got bought by P and ProtonPass got created (PP).

  • P accounts can exist without a PM
  • PM accounts needed alias solutions
  • SL accounts can exist without any P integration
  • PM/PP/SL has a free and paid tier

The information above also means P had to have a solution to have aliases before bought SL, or created PP, so -as the forum-mates wrote:

“all aliases you created continue working normally, both on receiving and sending emails”…“only true if … not through Proton”

Means: if you have a P account, with P/PM premium, and you stop your subscription, you lose the PM premium benefits, what is includes the PROTON ALIASES. (not SL, not PP)

BUT not the same with PP ans SL:

account relation SL existed as it did. But P bought it. And created/integrated it as PP:

  • PP just an integrated frontend for SL.

    • If you create a PP account you will have a SL account. (You can log into it with the “login with proton” on SL, with your P-creds, and see all of your aliases)
    • So you have a SL account, what is not different than a normal SL account, so you can attach a login mail and password to it, and you can log in with that too >>ignoring the P-creds
    • also SL was a individual project, but P bought it, so you can attach, deattach SL accounts to/from P accounts (made for existing SL users)

  • Conclusion of the above mentioned things: you can deattach a PP created SL account from that P account what you created it with.

Alias management:

  • If you create an alias-containing entry (in PP), the alias pops into the attached SL.
    • If it is the first, or there is no attached SL account (meaning the previously attached is deattached), it will create a new SL account (loginable with the above mentioned button).
    • But if you create a new alias in SL, while that account is attached to a P/PP account, it will not show up in PP, there is no backwards compatibility.
  • If you created aliases in PP, but you deattach the SL account, both account keep a memory of it.
    • in PP you will get an error while loading it in, but it stays in the listing
    • in SL, since it is the main system part, everithing works normally
  • You can attach already existing and filled SL accounts to P(P) accounts, and the newly created aliases will be created in that SL account.
  • attached SL’s selected alias format (words or random alphanumeric) modifies the PP generated alias format (in PP there is no ption for that)
  • SL only lists its own avaible aliases for creation, as well PPonly lists its aliases for creation, but sure, after created, all managable in SL.

Premiums: I had an SL premium, when the above mentioned “1 year free PP” dropped, and i had overlapping time:

  • SL premium is independent from the PP or its premium
  • PP plus is independent from SL or its premium
    • (P ultimate upgrades everithing, i think)

Bonus: if you use up your alias limit in SL, you can attach it to a PP what has an other 10 free alias limit [not used yet] (since the premiums are not linked, PP should be able to default overpush SL’s alias limit) , but if you create your aliases in PP first, you already using up your 10 SL slot (free tier)

In one way or an other i went through mostly all combinations/variations of the above mentioned things, even tried or used 1-2 different proton, or external (mail) accounts to see what is possible, and i can say: it is not that complicated, but needed to sit on it a bit.

12

SimleLogin definitely offers the better deal. But I have other serious issues with them that I plan to raise in this forum to gage how the community feels about it.

13

Thanks for bringing this to our attention! The change you proposed has been implemented in the following pull request and should reflect on the site in its next release.